The more and more attention to human well-being, functional capacity, health promotion, treatment and rehabilitation is paid in today's society. Optimal interoperability of the human and technical means, the knowledge in helping human to maximize the use of physiological power come in handy for the best sports results or simply right physical condition. Strengthening the human's movements speed, muscles force and endurance is of the utmost importance in both cases. In general it may be ensured by physical exercising, but for high performance in sports the co-ordination of movements and exercise technique are also very important.
The free weights, balls (Swiss ball), special balance platforms and other special measures are used to improve coordination of movements and develop the balance maintaining capability. The movements of the athlete are not restrained by any technical means when exercising with the free weights, so body-mass system balance must be ensured by appropriate muscles activity. Meanwhile, most of the exercising machines used for training muscles power and endurance are dedicated to specific groups of muscles, which are trained by repeating simple movements during which the inertial mass is moved (weight lifted), and its balance is ensured (or trajectory kept) by technical means (guides and so on). So for the athlete it is enough only to move the weights overcoming the gravity or inertia forces. The possibilities of such universal power training equipment are limited also due to fact that they usually imply performing of movements which not conform to the movements characteristic of any particular sport.
While achieving high sports results it is important to educate not only the overall strength and endurance, but also to improve motion technique, which in most cases has a significant impact too. Therefore it is important to develop exercising machines—simulators for specific sports, for example—rowing (canoe-kayak, sweep-rowing, sculling etc.). In this case one more specific problem becomes relevant, namely—stability, because in real conditions (boat floating in water) a substantial instability is characteristic to boat-athlete system. In this instance the athlete must balance the whole system (unlike during strength training with free weights, when only the weight should be guided) what is quite difficult due to the absence of firm ground, because the rower sits in the boat free to float in the water, and the balance may be kept only in two ways—by changing the pose or position of the body and by using oars movements or their blades interaction with water. The exclusive positive feature of unstable exercising—workouts that require a body balancing makes additional affect on nervous system, more muscles are trained and it is done more effectively than during the common workouts with dumbbells. The best example of this type of exercising is rowing of the unstable boat floating in the water. It is recognized that rowing—one of the most effective and most sustainable ways of training human endurance and strength. The rower has to maintain a balance, coordinate the movements and control the force of all the muscles involved in rowing since all these factors have a significant impact on the workout or race result. Scientific studies of D. Behman, J. Kollmitzer, C. Richardson et all confirmed that muscle strength training does not always improve their balancing function, instability during power workouts causes higher exertion of muscles, promotes neuromuscular system to adapt and improves co-ordination, and consentaneous training of balance and strength enhances motion control and muscles activity (strength and stability).
However, almost all rowing simulators created so far both for amateur and professional athletes are of stable type. This and other deficiencies stimulate the search of methods to improve the training process, refine rowing technique to reduce muscle, ligament or joint injuries and other risks. One of such methods is the development of new training equipment basing on results of the research of biomechanical and physiological parameters of human body movements.
Having the aim to maximize performance of the rowing exercisers to this regard the development of unstable rowing simulators recently started, starting from the simplest equipped with an “adjustable stability seat” seat Core Perform, having a possibility to sway around its longitudinal axis (Rowing News, June 2008, Volume 15, # 4), or, as in case of rowing simulator, patented in 2009 by authors from the U.S. (Adjustable lateral instability feature for rowing simulator (International Publication Number WO2009/097452 A1, Jun. 8, 2009), where the whole machine is able to sway around a horizontal longitudinal axis. However, in the first case a stable footrest which cannot be found in a boat helps maintain the balance, in the second—the kinematic of oarsman movements is different than in the real boat and the only axis of swaying is available (ensuring only lateral instability), to ensure minimum stability being located slightly above the center of masses of athlete-rowing machine system, so the system instability not quite meet instability of boat floating in the water, because realistically a boat even while going straight moves up and down and rotates about all three coordinate axes. Almost all these conditions are met in the rowing simulator, described in the article “Unstable simulator of academic rowing (A. Domeika, V. Grigas, P. {hacek over (Z)}iliukas and A. Vilkauskas // Mechanics of the Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. Kaunas: Technologija. ISSN 1392-1207, 2009, no. 5 (79), p. 48-51), having 3 degrees of freedom However, all mentioned above simulators, including the last one, are not equipped with any stabilization (active balancing) system: athlete, unlike when rowing real boat, is not able to use oars to help himself to maintain a balance.
The aim of this invention—the extension of the functionality of lever type unstable rowing simulator by delivering the athlete the possibility to maintain the balance in the same way as it can be done in case of the boat floating in the water, that is by moving up and down the levers simulating oar handles.